Opinion: Toronto is Stifling its Outdoor Dining Program

In an opinion piece for the Toronto Star, Edward Keenan criticizes the Toronto for “ruining” the CaféTO outdoor dining program in the process of trying to make it permanent.

After the city reduced the onerous fees and rules imposed by a first draft of the program in January, applicants now say they are waiting months for approvals. For Keenan, this is unacceptable. “Let me make this as clear as I can: the patio season in Toronto is short, maybe 100 days a year. If the ‘detailed review’ process you’ve set up for patio approvals takes well into the warm weather patio season to conclude, then you’ve botched it.”

Here’s the core thing to understand: these patios make the city a better place — they are good for business, good for neighbourhoods, good for the liveliness of streets. We should be begging shopkeepers to install them. Instead we’ve made it difficult.

Keenan notes that this isn’t the only way the city finds “something we actively want or need people to do,” then makes residents “ jump through (often expensive) hoops to do it.” The same applies to building denser housing, Keenan writes.

For Keenan, this fails to internalize the lessons of the pandemic, which showed that “when our backs are against the wall, we can do things, through our government, together — and we can do them quickly.”